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Topic: Meetup with Euge (Read 2866 times)

My daughter,her boyfriendish type person, and I got to have a few beers with Euge last night at the Freetail Brewery in San Antonio. Had a great time, wish we could have hung out longer but life is what it is..

It was fantastic to meet Corky and the younger folks. All beer lovers! The skeeters were out in force but it was beautiful evening sitting out there at Freetail Brewery (pub?).

Corky got the server to show us the actual brewery which had four 7 bbl tanks and maybe some more tucked away somewhere. Regardless, the four fermenters, mashtun, kettle and bottling line were tucked away in a space that wouldn't have filled half my garage! I noticed the mashtun and kettle were from "The Pub Brewing co." Amazing and it gives food for thought...

And the beer is decently made. I enjoyed a 3.5% Rye Wit as my first beer.

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The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool. -Richard P. Feynman

A search for san antonio led to this post. I will be in SA within the next couple weeks, about to attend school again at UTSA. Perhaps another meetup is in order! Also, anyone with a connection to a homebrew club (preferably on the NW side) do tell

I'm envisioning that your daughter has been married for 10 years to this guy, but you still call him this. Many Dad's would.

It's even weirder than that. After high school they moved to Albuquerque and lived together for 4 or 5 years, then split up. He moved to San Antonio to live with his mother and stepfather, and my daughter then rented his mother's house in Carlsbad. After a couple of years apart I had a specialized job opening perfect for him so at my daughter's suggestion I hired him. Now they both live in his mother's house(allegedly in separate rooms), work in the same office and we have no idea if they are romantically involved or not. Since they are both my employees I am not allowed to pry into their private lives. But he's a homebrewer, she's been an avid beer lover for years so we all get along great.

Well I arrived in town and went to homebrew party, great place! I went a little nuts when I got to town, bought a turkey fryer type setup for brewing, a chest freezer, and picked up a johnson controller from homebrew party. They had it in stock! They have a pretty good selection of grains and hops, unfortunately no citra or simcoe though. I will definitely be picking up my stuff from them from now on, as it's very close to my house, with decent hours.

One more note... Just brewed my first batch with the new setup. The turkey fryer actually came with a 7.5 gallon pot, which was perfect for what I needed, saving me the effort of buying a new pot for the moment. I "seasoned" it by boiling some water in it before I made my first batch of San Antonio beer (my 4th AG batch, FWIW). Because of the new pot, I will go back to five gallon batches on my next batch. I can easily boil up to about 6 gallons without fear of boil-over, as long as I pay attention.

The freezer with controller was working quite perfectly, 66F pretty steady. But... I broke the damn thermometer near the end of my brew! It was just the steel shot that broke, and didn't contaminate my beer or anything, but alas I am currently not checking my temps anymore! I should have a new unbreakable thermometer by thurs or fri. Currently the beer is in the freezer but doesn't have a monitoring thermometer. It will be fine.

Water: I still smell funky chemical aromas in both the water at my brother's house and my mother's house, so I used bottled spring water. Five bucks worth of water is worth it to avoid pouring out four gallons of beer!

Hops: used fuggles leaf in paint strainer bags, worked great. Made sure to dispose of the hops out of reach of animals.